Maybe house arrest wasn’t the best idea after all. But jail doesn’t seem to be the answer, either.

What to do with a girl who fakes her own cancer, scams thousands of dollars, gets a sweetheart sentence and repays it all by getting arrested for shoplifting?

Cancer faker Ashley Kirilow was back in court Friday morning, this time in Hamilton, accused of theft under $5,000 and violating her conditional sentence. She was remanded in custody until she makes another court appearance Monday.

Hamilton Police say she was picked up at a local grocery store on Oct. 7 after a security guard said he spotted her pocketing $11 worth of cold medicine.

And everyone had been so hopeful last spring. Were we misled yet again by this con artist? Or are we looking at a very ill young lady who keeps crying out for help — and isn’t getting the treatment that she needs?

It was back in April we were in the Milton courthouse and the 23-year-old, her hair and eyebrows all grown back in, was assuring the kind judge in her tiny, barely-there voice that she would take this second chance and turn her life around. Instead of any jail time for scamming $12,000 in donations from kind co-workers and strangers, the lucky girl was getting a 15-month conditional sentence — 10 months of it under house arrest — and was to perform 100 hours of community service.

“This was a protracted, elaborate fraud,” Justice Fred Forsythe said, trying his best to sound stern as he accepted the joint sentencing submission from the defence and Crown. “Once started on this road, with this tremendous craving for attention that Ms. Kirilow needs because of her particular background...it was almost like an intoxication to her.”

We were told Kirilow had pretended to have cancer to garner sympathy from her estranged family. Poor thing, we heard the sad tale of her difficult upbringing, of how Kirilow’s mother was 15 and her father 17 when she was born and how she underwent “traumatic” events while being raised in a dysfunctional family.

But then a lot of people suffer terrible childhoods. They don’t shave off their hair and eyebrows to pretend they have terminal cancer, establish bogus charities and pretend they’re donating all the funds to cancer research while really spending the money on themselves.

Kirilow basked in all the attention for more than a year until somebody tipped off police in August 2010 and her charade came to an abrupt end.

“These are not the actions of a rational mind,” the judge declared.

That was certainly her lawyer’s argument. In April, Brendan Neil told the court Kirilow was on a hefty cocktail of medications — from Ativan to Prozac — and had been diagnosed with general anxiety, depression and personality disorder. Just two months before her sentencing, she’d checked herself into the psychiatric ward at Joseph Brant hospital in Burlington to get treatment. The plan, he said, was for her to start her house arrest in hospital and then transfer to a group-home setting where she could continue getting the mental help she obviously needed.

But it doesn’t seem she’s had that help at all.

Six months ago, the benevolent judge decided against ordering Kirilow to pay any restitution and then like a doting grandfather, he sent her on her way with a warning that if she violated any of the terms of her conditional sentence, she’d be back in custody.

“I don’t want that,” Kirilow smiled sweetly.

“I sincerely hope on behalf of society, with the assistance of doctors and your own good efforts, you’ll get on with your life and have many years of productive and hopefully happier years,” Forsythe said.

Yet here she is, in trouble again.

Is it more attention-seeking behaviour? A sincere cry for help? Or is this just a cunning young woman who managed to manipulate a sympathetic justice system the first time, and now has her eyes on the next?

Five years after Const. Adam Lourenco was accused of punching and pulling a gun on a black teen in the “Neptune Four” case, his misconduct hearing before a Toronto Police tribunal has yet to begin — with the latest delay coming as his lawyers try to remove the adjudicator for an “apprehension of bias.”